Amazon is Paying The Kelce Brothers $100M+ For Their New Heights Podcast to Join the Wondery Podcast Network

It's wild to me that Amazon would shell out more than $100M for three years of a podcast and not even get exclusive rights. I know it's an extremely popular show. There are probably more people than I think who will pay the $5.99 a month for the privilege of listening to New Heights a few hours earlier than everyone else. Being able to listen ad-free and not having to tap the +30 seconds button a few times per hour is probably nice as well. But still... $100M for the Kelce's to be on your Wondery+ platform, where it will still get significantly less listens than it will on Apple or Spotify (I just made that up, but it has to be true right? How many people are really going to pay money for Wondery+ for a show they can get for free?). That just seems crazy. I can't imagine they make a return on that investment.

But apparently these companies think it's worth it. Even the Joe Rogan Experience is available on YouTube and Apple Podcasts, despite having a $250M deal with Spotify. And there must be some money they're making through advertising. Even if the New Heights will technically be "ad-free", it's still going to be "brought to you by [insert beverage company name]", right? Or maybe not. I obviously don't know how this shit works, or what the thought process behind these major deals are. They don't make sense to me. Maybe it's just all about exposure and trying to capture market share. Like with a big gambling company buys a sports & pop culture website and just throws money at it for a few years in hopes that something good will happen. Regardless, the numbers being thrown around in the podcasting world lately have been massive.

I haven't listened to a second of the Kelce brother's New Heights podcast outside of when random clips pop up on Twitter. And I'm pretty sure the majority of those clips have been about Taylor Swift and not football. But I'm told it's a great show. It's consistently a top ranked sports podcast when they're not on break between seasons (they're in between Season 2 & Season 3 right now). Also... if Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce ever break up... the "Travis Tell All" episode of New Heights might be the most listened to podcast in the history of podcasts. The potential of that alone is probably worth $100M of change out of Jeff Bezos' pocket.